Azure City

Elan: Did you guys know that Azure City is the largest trading port in Southern lands? Thousands of ships come from all around the world to barter for fine Southern goods like silk, spices, and video games. The average temperature for this season is 63° F, with average yearly precipitation of 26.43 inches. Roy: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a successful Bardic Knowledge check.

In General

Citadel City: Azure City was built to guard Soon's Gate, so it looks like a fortress.

Gratuitous Japanese: Several of the names, probaby to parody the random use of the language "because it's cool" (Lord Shojo being a case in point, since Shojo is Japanese for "girl"note More precisely, it means "virginal maiden", which is even more hilarious.).

The Paladin: The Sapphire Guard notably features the archetypical Lawful Stupid paladin juxtaposed with several much more positive examples of Paladins. They work for the Southern Gods to smite evil.

Badass: With all the other entries in this section, it's easy to forget that Miko has definitely earned her status as the most powerful (living) paladin of the Sapphire Guard. She defeated the entire Order (albeit without Durkon) twice, with only her horse. She single-handedly defeated Redcloak, who would have died without Xykon's intervention — Redcloak, who curb-stomped Hinjo, the second-most powerful paladin in the Sapphire Guard, and according to Durkon, could have done the same to Elan even when low on spells. And even without her paladin powers, she manages to put up a good fight against both Roy and Hinjo.

Believing Their Own Lies: One of Miko's critical flaws is she makes up stuff to justify her actions and can't see the errors in her own logic.

Black and White Insanity: Miko built on this trope, growing increasingly delusional over the course of the story arc. As her insanity increases, it changes her from a mere Knight Templar into a total Windmill Crusader — handwaving even the fact that the Gods have stripped her of her paladin powers.

Broken Bird: Discovering her liege lord was faking senility and working behind the paladins;' backs and then losing her paladinhood hit her really hard.

Death Equals Redemption: Somewhat averted. She was specifically trying to gain redemption to be restored to the paladin class, and in her dying moments, Soon's spirit explains why and how she failed at this. However, he reassures her that her spirit will be reunited with her beloved horse, Windstriker, which suggests that wherever her soul goes in the afterlife, it'll be a Good place, or at least one accessible to such beings.

Deconstruction: Miko is intended as a commentary and deadpan parody on people who play Lawful Good characters as Lawful Zealous. This becomes especially clear when she's contrasted against other Lawful Good characters in the comic, such as Hinjo and Roy.

De-power: Her immediate punishment for killing Lord Shojo is to lose her status as a paladin and its associated bonuses.

Detect Evil: Tries and fails to detect any evil in the Order. Belkar, who is evil, blocks the ability with a lead sheet, and sues her for it.

Determinator: Never ever gives up in her eternal quest to smite evil (or rather, who ever she considers to be evil).

Hero Antagonist: In the commentary, Rich wanted to know if he could pull off a Lawful Good character who is an antagonist. Miko opposes the Order and hampers their progress, but she also helps the dirt farmers without hesitation, helps to organize an evacuation of the inn when the danger appears, goes back into the inn to make sure there were no stragglers, attacked them as harshly as she did because her information gathering had yielded information on their evil counterparts, extenuating circumstances (the crown causing its wearer to registers as strongly evil), as well as their genuine bad behavior (the flumphs, Belkar's actions in the barbarian guild, the weasel thrown down the troll/ogre's gullet). She's just obnoxious and overbearing.

Honor Before Reason: Played with. In the battle with the ogres, she looked like she walked into the ogre camp and alerted the entire group in order to have a fair fight, but it was just an excuse to clump them all together so the spellcasters could nuke them more easily. However, when Belkar was raising havoc in Azure City dungeons, rather than call a host of troops to track him down, she let him goad her into fighting him on his terms.

Miko: I am Miko Miyazaki, samurai of the Sapphire Guard, loyal vassal of Lord Shojo, daughter of Eyko, and paladin of the Twelve Gods of the South. MitD: Neat! It must be hard to fit all that on your business cards, though.

Lawful Stupid: Believes she is chosen by the Twelve Gods for... something, and therefore everything she does is right. Miko is very quick at jumping to conclusions without ever slowing down to think first.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Twice; first when she kills Shojo, believing him corrupt, and then again by destroying the Gate and thus any chance of victory for the paladins during the Siege of Azure City.

Obstructive Zealot: She believes the 12 Gods have a "special mission" for her and utterly and vehemently refuses to listen anyone or anything that doesn't fit her delusion. Even when the 12 gods explicitly disapprove Miko by depriving her of her paladinhood.

Pride: Miko is so full of herself that she will never question her actions, her judgment, or her belief that she is "special" and has a great and prestigious destiny.

Miko Miyazaki: The gods have a plan for me, I know it! I am special, the most powerful paladin in the Sapphire Guard! They wouldn't do this to ME without a reason.

Reassigned to Antarctica: "Let's just say there's a reason Miko gets picked for long missions. In foreign countries. Which keep her away from home for months at a time." Unlike typical examples of this trope, she is given actual assignments of importance at least.

Redemption Equals Death: Sort of. Soon Kim explains that he's pleased that she kept the Gate out of Evil hands but true redemption means overcoming what caused her fall in the first place.

Samus is a Girl: The mysterious blue-cloaked, hooded figure tracking down the Order is a girl. Roy knocks off her hood in their first battle and his reaction to the revelation is "wow". He is accused of wanting to "bone" her afterwards.

Sanity Slippage: She became increasingly irrational and impulsive after the Order of the Stick is brought to Azure City. After she killed Lord Shojo, she went into extreme denial and came up with crazy (and at times contradicting) theories about the Order of the Stick.

Sarcasm-Blind: In the words of Shojo, "Good gods, they can teach you how to detect evil, but not sarcasm?"

Sixth Ranger: For the Order of the Stick, temporarily, causing lots of tension in the process.

Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: For Belkar, after his jailbreak. Despite working with heroes, Belkar is an evil criminal who is on the run from the law. Of course Miko has to bring him in.

Tautological Templar: She is convinced that, being the most powerful member of the Sapphire Guard, she must have the Twelve Gods' favor. Therefore, anything she does is right by definition and anything that happens to her including falling from paladinhood is part of the gods' greater plan for her.

Later goes into Insane Troll Logic, when Miko determines that because the gods could easily stop her from breaking out of prison but don't, they clearly want her to do so.

Tragic Hero: She tries to do what she believes is right but looses sense of herself due to paranoia and zealousness. Then she dies without being able to redeem herself.

Trauma Conga Line: In the span of a couple days she learned of an impending attack on her homeland, learned that her mentor had been lying to her her entire life, executed him for treason, learned he was innocent of said treason, lost her powers, lost her homeland, was thrown in prison, and finally died.

With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: A minor example, but being the most powerful paladin in the Sapphire Guard clearly went to her head, disconnecting her from reality. Always being far away from Azure City also helped.

You Need to Get Laid: Roy says she wouldn't be so uptight if she were regularly receiving "treasure type O."

Windstriker

Windstriker

Miko's paladin warhorse mount and, as it is implied, her only friend in the world.

Lord Shojo

Former Sapphire Commander and sovereign of Azure City. Shojo's father, Lord Ronjo, was the first sovereign of Azure City to also serve as commander of Soon Kim's Sapphire Guard. Shojo inherited both titles, but is in no way a paladin nor member of the Sapphire Guard himself (instead, he is a 14th-level aristocrat, a NPC class). He faked senility to keep the nobility from assassinating him while keeping them in check, and devised complex schemes to get what he wanted done without ticking off the paladins and violating their code of honor.

Anti-Hero: His goal is the perservation of the world, his city and his gate. He helps the heroes to make this happen, but has unsavory methods.

Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: He pretends to be senile so to give the impression of being easily manipulated. If one noble or other fails to convince him of something then they assume some other noble got to him first.

Aristocrats Are Evil: Averted. Despite him being an aristocrat, Belkar states in one strip after Shojo died that he was most probably Chaotic Good. This fits with Shojo's actions in general, and Belkar had no particular reason to lie about it; he's not going to lie if the truth is more insulting, as was the case when he berated the random cleric for being too dense to realize why Shojo wouldn't want to be raised.

Decoy Trial: He staged one to have the Order traverse an entire continent on foot to offer them a job. The judge was Roy's father.

Dirty Old Man: Tells Hinjo in a bonus comic to "not forget to knock some honey up" and offers some racy scrolls if there are any problems. At Shojo's funeral Sangwaan comments that Shojo would often look at her breasts.

Fatal Flaw: His paranoia is a two-edged sword. It serves him well in avoiding assassinations by the city's daimyos, but it also gets him killed, in a roundabout way. His elaborate scheme to get the Order to Azure City relies on deceiving the paladins about his true motives and staging a fake trial. Miko finally loses it when she learns the truth, and murders him. One thinks he would have done better to just send them an invitation.

Helpful Hallucination: When he appears to Belkar; it is left unclear whether it was really Shojo's ghost, an illusion created by the Mark of Justice, or a figment of Belkar's feverish imagination.

Hoist by His Own Petard: Shojo's willful deception of the paladins gets him killed. It's confirmed in the commentary from "War and XPs" that, while Shojo is portrayed sympathetically, his death is his own fault.

Killed Off for Real: A cleric used Resurrection on him and confirmed the spell was working properly, but Shojo stayed dead. Belkar theorizes this is because he is at peace in Chaotic Good heaven, and he would have likely died of old age soon anyway. He's not coming back.

Obfuscating Insanity: He fakes senility to make others think he is easily controlled and thus avoid assassination.

Properly Paranoid: He took the Improved Paranoia feat 5 levels ago. It has served him well.

Reasonable Authority Figure: He believes that Soon Kim's oath is more detrimental to the Sapphire Guards' intended role than helpful. This is given further weight when it turns out that, for decades, the Sapphire Guard have been wrong as to the true position of Girard's Gate.

Spirit Advisor: When he appears to Belkar; it is left unclear whether it was really Shojo's ghost, an illusion created by the Mark of Justice, or a figment of Belkar's feverish imagination.

To Be Lawful or Good: An interesting take on the topic. In essence, Shojo's character arc in the story is based on the idea that he decided Good was more important than Law and that Soon Kim's oath was pushing the Sapphire Guard into Lawful Stupid territory. So he secretly hired the Order of the Stick to do what the oathbound paladins under him could not. This is helped by the fact that he has always been, as far as we know, on the opposite side of the Ethical axis to Law.

Unreliable Expositor: An apparently unwitting example; it's become increasingly clear as the strip has progressed that the information he gave the Order about the Snarl was at the very least heavily flawed and incomplete, if not outright inaccurate.

Hinjo

"Yeah, well, you probably shouldn't have discussed how you're going to beat the system in front of the guy charged with upholding the system. I still get to make Listen checks when I'm three feet away, you know."

Nephew and sole heir of Lord Shojo, and therefore the new Sapphire Commander and sovereign of Azure-City-in-Exile. After his uncle's death and Redcloak's conquest of Azure City, he and most of the city's civilian population have fled into exile, and have settled in an abandoned Elven settlement on the Western Continent. He hopes to one day reclaim his home, and leads the remnants of the Sapphire Guard with that goal in mind. A powerful paladin, he is considerably more easygoing and personable than Miko and prefers mounted front-line combat with his wolf, Argent.

Attack! Attack! Attack!: He refuses to retreat from Azure City after it has been overrun by hobgoblins, but is convinced by the Order.

Can't Catch Up: While he stays back to oversee the refuge fleet, his paladins and the Order go on missions and earn levels.

Foil: To Miko. Commentary in the books remarks that Hinjo's presence contrasts with Miko's when Shojo is revealed to be deceiving the paladins. Hinjo's response is of someone "who believes in the law", while Miko's is someone who "believes herself above the law."

Hero of Another Story: Cut-aways to him after the "Don't Split Up the Party" arc imply that he is having plenty of adventures of his own in the new home for the refugees of Azure City.

Honor Before Reason: Not like Miko, but Hinjo is still a stickler for the rules, and his uncle states in a bonus comic that he hopes Hinjo will grow out of this mindest by the time he takes command of Azure City.

Shojo: Hinjo has grown up into a good, honorable man — which unfortunately makes him singularly unsuited to the task of governing Azure City and its territories. I'm not worried, though. Give him another ten years of instruction, and his naïve idealism will fall like kobolds before a high-level fighter.

In Its Hour of Need: Refuses to leave Azure City during Xykon's siege despite how far victory slips away. He is ultimately convinced of the foolishness of this mindset.

Magic Knight: Due to being a paladin, he has both fighting and magic skills.

Modest Royalty: After becoming the ruler of Azure City, he wears the same paladin armor he did before he ruled.

Nephewism: What happened to his parents? Who knows; maybe ninjas got them.

Nice Guy: He's always friendly and polite and when the Order is being taken to their trial, he tells them some funny stories. After Miko kills Shojo, he tries to offer her a second chance to redeem herself despite her just killing his only known living relative.

O-Chul

"Your life is much like this Go board, my friend. You have allowed yourself to be surrounded by enemy pieces — people who wish to bend you to their will, to remove your unique voice from the board and replace it with one of... of mindless subservience. But as you correctly point out, you are still holding on two empty places in the center. They are your heart, and your mind. They are the places that make you what you really are."

And I Must Scream: He spends an unspecified amount of time paralysed by Xykon, while his fellow paladins killed themselves around him, Xykon took the gate, and Miko destroyed the gate when they were winning. Then he was blown out a window and taken to a tea party when he needed to be escaping.

Badass: Forget all the damage he did during the Siege of Azure City; he almost killed Redcloak with a prison bar.

Redcloak: After all this time...I have finally found the very WORST liar in the entire world.

Brass Balls: "+5 Holy Cojones", as stated by resident Big Bad Xykon. He was genuinely surprised that O-Chul was going to fight him wearing nothing but his prisoner loincloth and wielding nothing but his paladin might.

Cold-Blooded Torture: At the hands of Team Evil for fun and information. (And as a stalling tactic.)

Determinator: O-Chul manages to get a list of all (or at least most) of Xykon's spells. When asked how, he simply replies "One saving throw at a time." His Constitution score is in the mid-twenties. For reference, the average human has a score of ten and increases are not linear.

O-Chul: Well, I was going to express a dislike of squid, but I guess babies top my list as well.

The Dog Bites Back: After months of torture, he nearly kills Redcloak, and puts out his right eye.

Dramatic Necklace Removal: With Redcloak's holy symbol; catching the chain on his impromtu spear and pulling it off can't be anything but dramatic.

Dump Stat: Charisma. This comes back to bite him when he tries to dupe Redcloak.

Genius Bruiser: He has a mind for the military, and that's not all. Through months of captivity and torture, he created a running list of Xykon's spells by surviving them one at a time. Finally, he teaches Go and espouses a philosophy centered on it.

Guile Hero: Extremely adaptable. When captured, O-Chul takes advantage of the situation to get Xykon's spell list, nudge the Monster in the Darkness away from evil a bit, and when released, is in position to try to break Xykon's phylactery (but is stopped at the last second). Also capable of using Exact Words when necessary, though usually not for manipulative reasons.

Healing Hands: A standard paladin ability. He uses it regularly on himself to heal the wounds inflicted by Redcloak's torture regimen.

I Gave My Word: He thinks it's obvious that Soon Kim kept his oath. After all, he's a paladin and it's the same thing he himself would do.

Improvised Weapon: He can and will use anything, from a broken cage bar to bare fists, highly effectively and often powered-up with Smite Evil.

Interrogated for Nothing: Redcloak suspected he was telling the truth even before their session on the tower, but wanted to keep Xykon in the city so the hobgoblins could solidify their position.

Made of Iron: He survives a Castle-Shattering Kaboom, a tank of acid with a shark in it (multiple times, it's implied), being trapped in a cage filled with rabid dire wallabies, a staring contest with a basilisk (which he won, technically; he never blinked), along with months of torture. Some would argue that he borders on Implacable Man. He has a Constitution score in the mid-twenties.note For those unfamiliar with the system: The average Constitution (health) score is ten. 18 is the normal 1st level human maximum. With normal rules and without magic items you'll need to be level 8 to reach constitution score of 20, level 16 to reach score 22 and level 20 to reach score 25. All this sacrificing all the others abilities. This means he probably has the Hit Points of an average character twice his level. Also, paladins are traditionally loaded down with class features and abilities that make them rather hard to kill — but O-Chul has mostly fighter levels. Hinjo even remarks that he is the "toughest" Sapphire guardsman.

Reconstructed Trope: Reconstructs paladins as a follow-up to Miko's decontruction of the class.

Samurai: Like the other paladins of the Sapphire Guard, except he is just as good (or better!) with his bare hands as a sword.

Scars Are Forever: Despite receiving healing magic regularly, he's been tortured for so long that his body is literally covered in scars. Even better, when O-Chul breaks out, he charges Redcloak with a metal bar ripped from his cage; Redcloak nails him in the forehead with a Disintegrate, showing off O-Chul's skeleton. Not only does O-Chul shake off the hit like it was nothing, if you look closely, his skull has a scar matching the one along his temple — meaning the cut that made it went all the way to the bone. (The goblins may not be responsible for that one, since he has the scar even before the Battle of Azure City.)

Smite Evil: He charges holy power into his bare hands to assault Xykon.

Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Why Did It Have to Be Sharks? Though in actuality he does not fear them, since being a paladin makes him immune to fear. It's more like they just make him oddly uncomfortable. The acid-breathing shark may have had something to do with this.

Lien

Lien

"It was pretty easy for me to put two and two together. Contrary to popular opinion, Good is not always dumb."

Lien: My parents were fishermen. When I was a little girl, I stood right here and learned how to clean the fish that they caught. I'm telling you this so that you know that when I say that if you take one more step, I will gut you like the catch of the day — IT IS NOT HYPERBOLE!

Good Cop/Bad Cop: Or Good Bard, Bad Paladin; in one of the bonus comics, she and Elan interrogate a mermaid who had known a group of aquatic hobgoblins that attacked the Azure City fleet using this technique.

Turn Undead: He uses this paladin power against Tsukiko's wights. It doesn't destroy them, but does enough to prevent them from level draining.

Weapon of Choice: A katana, standard for Sapphire Guard members. It also doubles as a divine focus for turning undead.

You Are in Command Now: Thanh feels he's out of his league, but he's the only person that the other Resistance groups could agree on since they would not allow some foreigner to lead them, ruling out Haley.

Regular soldiers in the Azure City army, Daigo and Kazumi refuse to be nameless Red Shirts like the rest of the army — literally, by mentioning their names. They escaped Azure along with Elan, Vaarsuvius and Durkon. Daigo and Kazumi are now married, with Kazumi pregnant, and have been given the status of nobility by Hinjo. The fact that their names are known also makes them significantly more competent than regular Azurite soldiers.

Chickification: Averted by Kazumi during her pregnancy. She tells three hostile ninjas that she didn't forget all her military training the moment she conceived, and she tells them this while kicking their ass. Her husband, on the other hand...

Kazumi: You stupid pieces of @#!%. I was in the army, too, and I didn't forget four years of training the moment my egg's perimeter was breached. You think just because I can't see my feet right now that I can't put one of them up your cowardly ninja asses? Please.

Pregnant Hostage: The ninjas thought Kazumi would be this trope. They were wrong.

Rags to Riches: Technically, as Hinjo promotes them to nobility at their wedding.

Subverted Trope: Red Shirt again, naturally, along with Red Shirt Army. Even before that, their class is fighter, a character class. The majority of the NPCs are warriors (which is basically the same class without the feats), making them Elite Mook by default.

Famous Last Words: "Now come along, bring me to your master so we can begin the Trial of the Century."

Filler Villain: He has nothing to do with the main plot of the gates. He's just there to fill time while the Order of the Stick regroups.

Karma Houdini: Defied Trope; Kubota plans to invoke this, by framing Therkla and using his aristocrat talents to turn around and use his trial to slander Hinjo, but Vaarsuvius defies this by simply disintegrating him.

Self-Disposing Villain: He cleverly realizes that an actual surrender is the best way to survive, since Elan will then be forced to bring him in for a trial that will most likely work in his favor.

Slimeball: Almost everything he does to try to usurp Hinjo's position is just plain hateful, culminating in him ordering the assassination of a pair of former commoners who were promoted to nobility. The wife is pregnant. When the plan fails, he murders his own number two with poison just to give himself time to escape.

Smug Snake: His status as a this is cemented by the fact that he just doesn't stack up against Xykon and Redcloak. He's also horribly naive, and thinks taking the city back from Xykon will be a trivial matter.

Take Over the City: His villainy is entirely geared toward usurping Azure City's rulership. Even when there isn't even much of a city to rule anymore.

Therkla

Therkla

"Actually, it's completely true. Our master DID order us to lure you here and kill you. I was just hoping... I was hoping you could be my boyfriend instead."

Character Alignment: True Neutral. She's an active, balancing kind of Neutral, as opposed to the disinterested kind. Her proposed solution to the fleet's struggle between good and evil is that the two groups and their respective followers split up and go their separate ways, and she seems genuinely confused that neither finds this acceptable. invoked

Child by Rape: Elan and Kubota think this is the only way a half-orc could be created but the opposite is true; her parents were Sickeningly Sweethearts. It's an allusion to what D&D says is often the case with half-orc children.

Satellite Love Interest: What would she be like without Elan? She was a subject of debate on the forums when she was alive and her detractors often used this as an argument.

Take a Third Option: She wants an outcome where her boss and her crush survive the arc. She tried to convince Kubota to separate from Hinjo and form his own kingdom somewhere else. Kubota didn't like that idea and poisoned her for it.

Call Forward: In the Kickstarer reward Therkla comic, Sangwaan comments that she's tired of everyone pitying her for her birth defect that will leave her dead by age 30. She states that "I hope when it is my time, no-one will see it coming." Note that this comic came out well after we saw her killed by an invisible zombie dragon in the main story.

Sangwaan: Heh heh, well played, Lord Rooster.

Cruel and Unusual Death: She's apparently killed when Xykon's zombie dragon bit her and throws her off the ramparts of Azure City's outer wall.

Deadpan Snarker: Has a particularly funny one in a bonus comic dealing with Shojo's funeral.

Sangwaan: He never treated me differently for my disability. He tried to look down my shirt like any other girl.

Only Six Faces: There's really no way to tell this Guy with a Halberd from any other male soldier in the Azurite army, which has led to a fandom running gag that any time one of them has a significant line, it's this guy.

I Did What I Had to Do: He takes advantage of Hinjo getting knocked unconscious to order the departure of the junk. This was necessary to save all their lives, because Hinjo insisted on waiting for Haley who was somewhere in the battlefield reclaiming Roy's corpse.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy